President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear President Obama, Nothing you don’t know, but let me just say it: the world’s a weird place. In my younger years, I might have said “crazy,” but that was back when I thought...
He was “an ascetic who... usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness. He is known for operating on a few hours' sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod... [He has] an encyclopedic, even...
On returning from his first trip to the Gaza Strip, Noam Chomsky told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, “It’s kind of amazing and inspiring to see people somehow managing to survive as caged animals subject to constant, random, sadistic punishment only to humiliate them,...
History, it is said, arrives first as tragedy, then as farce. First as Karl Marx, then as the Marx Brothers. In the case of twenty-first century America, history arrived first as George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith...
Part of a slogan from my hometown past sticks in my mind. “Build we must,” it went. Such an American phrase, really. Evidence of a can-do spirit from another country in another age. Now, in can’t-do America with its...
Untitled Document In the 1950s and early 1960s, the Cold War was commonly said to have partially plunged "into the shadows" as a secret, off-the-grid, spy-versus-spy conflict fought between the planet's two superpowers. No one caught this mood better than...
The Obama administration has engaged in a staggering military buildup in the Persian Gulf and at U.S. and allied bases around Iran (not to speak of in the air over that country and in cyberspace). Massive as it is, however, it hasn’t gotten much coverage lately....
Failure and unintended consequences: these are often hallmarks of U.S. military interventions. Who could have imagined, for instance, that forcing open the Kingdom of Japan at the point of U.S. Navy guns would eventually lead to bombs falling on ships from that same...
They looked like a gang of geriatric giants. Clad in smart casual attire -- dress shirts, sweaters, and jeans -- and incongruous blue hospital booties, they strode around “the world,” stopping to stroke their chins and ponder this or that potential crisis....
First the financial system collapses and it's impossible to access one’s money. Then the power and water systems stop functioning. Within days, society has begun to break down. In the cities, mothers and fathers roam the streets, foraging for food. The country finds...
